It has been known to use mounting posts projecting from a dielectric housing of an electrical connector to support the connector on a printed circuit board, a panel or other substrate to which the connector is to be mounted. The mounting posts are insertable into holes in the substrate to retain the connector thereon. For instance, it may be desirable to secure the connector to a printed circuit board prior to permanent connection such as by soldering the terminals of the connector to circuit traces on the printed circuit board.
It can be understood that dimensional tolerances between the mounting posts and the holes in the substrate are critical in providing a secure mounting of the connector on the substrate. Maintaining tight dimensional tolerances often is difficult and expensive if even possible. Extreme variances between the diameter of the hole in the substrate and the diameter of the mounting post could require excessive insertion forces that not only would render insertion of the mounting post in the hole difficult, but could cause the post to break.
Consequently, compliant or yieldable mounting posts have been designed to provide an interference fit within the mounting hole in the substrate. For instance, mounting posts with crushable ribs or wings have been designed to deform upon insertion. However, such crushable elements are prone to plastically take a "set". Flexible wings or ribs also have been used to accommodate tolerance variances between the mounting hole and the mounting post. However, such flexible components also cause problems because they are prone to overstress and break or lose their elasticity.
The present invention is directed to solving the above interrelated problems by providing a mounting post which has both flexible means to compensate for the aforementioned tolerances as well as generally rigid means to prevent overstressing of the flexible means.